I’ve made a few nice reeds lately but there is always something wrong that makes them not perfect. So what reed problems are usually helped by blowing in ?
The best reed I’ve made so far has a beautiful tone and is super responsive but at a comfortable blowing pressure when I play hard D and then lift my A finger ,the A jumps to the second octave and even when I replace my A finger the bottom D still plays High A.
Will blowing in help this problem?
On other reeds I sometimes have a problem playing high B after high G, the B drops back to low B ,and what about minor tuning issues. I remember some NPU guidelines saying that some reeds can come into tune after being played for awhile. True or false?
I’ve not heard of blowing in a reed. Maybe you mean breaking in or playing in a reed and this was just a Freudian slip.
In my experience, such that it is, breaking in a reed will make a hard reed easier to play. Other than that, while you play the new reed you’ll get used to its particularities. In that sense, it’s not the reed that changes but rather the way you play it.
I have been working on chanter reed fabrication and have found that the reed will be “different” if left overnight after it has been altered by sanding/scraping etc.
I made 4 of them and play each one every night after my practice session with my main reed.
I then make adjustments and leave them until the next night and see if I made any improvements.
3 of the 4 are very close to working just right, one is out to lunch and not coming back.
I find that they are all becoming easier to play as each night goes by.
Some of it is me getting used to the reed but not all of it.
I always used to think the whole ‘playing in’ idea was a load of rubbish - i couldn’t see how a reed could magically change it’s dimensions without me scraping/cutting something. Having said that, none of my reeds used to last all that long!! I mean i used to make them fast and they’d last 6 months maybe.
Since then i’ve learned that if i make the reed and leave it on the hard side and then play it a few weeks then it does weaken a bit. Even if i have to scrape a little more after a few weeks, the reed seems to last much longer and be less prone to collapsing in a hot session, for example.
So to me the things which change seem to be the things you’d associate with the reed being too hard - too much air required, back D verging sharp, 2nd octave difficult to maintain.. And with some chanters odd notes will be sharp if the reed is too hard - g sometimes for example - and that too can improve as the reed settles/weakens.
Playing a reed in in my experience has an affect on the reed’s hardness responsiveness/ease of playability over time. However, radical changes in tuning or better, significant changes of tuning aside from what happens when reed closes (gen. speaking, sharper 1st octave, flatter 2nd, and a saggy/breaking back d, to name some),or opens won’t happen from simply playing and playing.
Things like a falling high b, are issues with either the reed or bore. So, if you’ve had reeds that produce an easy high b, it’s the reed.
Rory, you create the tuning parameters and as the reed opens (rarely), or collapses (yup) the tuning will vary w/in those parameters.
NOW..I’m speaking in black and white descriptions, “if this happens..then that happens…” aside from a handful of things, there’s always the anomaly waiting to kick you in the gut looming in the not too distant future. Keep making reeds and try to discover where you are going left when you could be going right!
Thanks all for the advice,my trouble is I’m always too eager to get a reed finished ,if I just slow down and give the reed time to rest between adjustments I’d probably get better results.
I absolutely agree. That has been my approach, and I usually get about ten years out of a reed. Some reeds that I have made in an hour have been awesome - but only for one night.
As I play in a new reed, I find that the bag pressure needed eases off and hard D quits gurgling. The G and A notes come into tune correctly or needs very little adjustment with a rush/poster putty.
I have the feeling that your reed is good, you just need to learn the pressure needed to play it. If you have problems keeping the bottom octave, try cutting with the thumb. That will usually drop the octave down. Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine is a good tune to get the technique down as the 2nd part has an octave A followed by an A.
The centerline of the reed may need thinning if you can’t hit hard bottom D (BTW, Paddy Keenan doesn’t play hard D or didn’t the three times I have heard him in person).
I had much rather have difficulty keeping the bottom octave rather than one that won’t jump octaves.
ok, my previous comment may have been blunt but it pretty much sums up my thinking on the subject.
My experience has shown that reeds will not play or blow in. The term alone is misleading
If we define a reed in terms of tone, tuning, balance and playability. These are fundamental aspects of a reed for Uilleann pipes. If these charateristics are not in the reed from the moment if takes its first breath, its not gonna be there, these elements cannot be “played” into a reed, they are entirely dependant upon the reed recipe , the cane and the match with the given chanter.
If by playing in you mean over a period of time play and re-shape and generally “mess” with the reed, you have not “played” this into the reed, you have adjusted the reed pattern given the performance charateristic in the given chanter ( or regulator)
I would hazard a guess and say that the majority ( but not all) of the people working on this assumption are perhaps those who are at the begining of the reed making journey and perhaps fear prevents further work in case of causing damage to a reed that “works” in say a batch of 5 or 6.
If you mean that by blowing in the reed, it softens and mellows, this is a natural phenonenon of the cane as it relaxes after millions of vibrations.
In this case the reed would need to exhibit all of the charateristics i mentioned above from the start.
Yep. You gotta start with a really good reed. After that, if you “play it in” properly, it should improve.
Here’s what separates the men from the boys:
Being able to easily
identify, (within a few seconds of bag squeezing,) the specific problems, and then
address, (within a few gentle adjustments of the components,) the quirks you can actually fix and make it “play itself.”
Proper tutelage, tools, lenses, adequate lighting, and a few decades worth of copious libations and those funny looking homemade cigarettes, etc., are the most useful of facilitators in this particular endeavour.
but it pretty much sums up my thinking on the subject.